Well, btb, I can tell you your posts are much harder to follow than the actual music

Keystring,

I'm finally getting what you said much earlier in this thread, Keystring: "Betty, writing about the notes being divided. It should have been obvious - "breve" "semibreve", "quarter" "half"
"hemi" "demi" ... everything speaks of fractions. Yet we do the opposite. We count forward. Sometimes we count the two eighth notes in a quarter, and mentally the quarter gets the value of 2. We count our measure to completion: 3/4 time 1 - 2 - 3 (done) 1 - 2 - 3 (done)."

Well, the truth is I've never considered counting the beats in a measure as "having them to spend" 4 - 3 - 2 - 1. The forward counting 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 I call "accumulative counting" like a cashier at the store totaling up your purchase. The other, "I have in my pocket to spend" idea - what would be advantages be?

I'm going to try both ways as explanations of "Music Math" - and see if there is anyone who is helped by this idea. Could it reinforce the precision of counting?

Of course, I use the Note Value Counting which does not assign a location within any of the measures as being beat 1, 2, 3, or 4. Along with eye movement training, and blue dots for steady beats in problem areas, and green coordination lines, and T? R? L?, I think I offer a lot of "tricks and tools" to the student to verify his counting ability.

I'll try to incorporate this as an alternative in my teaching. Would it be true that someone who values the use of money (equated here in the example to counting note values) would be more careful, maybe even exacting, compared to the impulsive shopper who doesn't think of it as spending money when using plastic. (No offense intended, people!)

Keystring, you have one very active and questioning mind - look at those neurons regrow from the use you place on them. Good thing according to neuropsychiatrist Dr. Daniel Amen, whom I heard on PBS last night, and immediately ordered his book "Change Your Brain, Change Your Life".

Regards!

Betty

I think, Betty, that my insight was more along the lines of ben ritmo which you offered in another thread. It is the same concept but perceived different - two perceptions co-existing and we are free to shuttle back and froth as the need arises. The measure is 4/4, there are four beats in it, and that means the whole measure is a package of four things, each of the four being a quarter of the whole. Well, in fact, counting while being aware of the rhythms of meter puts a new spin and adds extra life as well.

Oh, OK!

Yes, the shuttling back and forth happens in how I teach too, which ever makes the most sense at the time can be used.

I really "reinvented" it there then. But, I was excited to see it that way - amusing in a way - but also perhaps insightful - (btw, I do not mean inciteful). It certainly does not meet the standards of counting in the music world, but perhaps there is a golden nugget coming from it as the first beat being the 4 that is being subtracted from. Then, again, it may be totally without merit. For instance, would it work better for left hander-s as a declining balance?

Remember that headache and tiredness I mentioned, yawning? There is probably a good reason for it! Trying to understand paradigms and anomalies.

Betty

You teach them every day. Who used the word "ben ritmo" in the first place in the pursuit of a fast scale in the other thread, as well as in guiding me to approaching a piece a while back? That is a paradigm shift. In the scales thread you were saying: think ben ritmo. Do not think of the beats in the measure, but count each measure as one beat. Between the "do not" and the "but" there is a shift in perspective.

Cooke, with his pillars, is shifting perspectives.

If the thumb pivots under the hand, instead of the hand pivoting on the thumb, there's another. Yet it's the same thing. Does it make a difference?

Keystring is much happier scraping cat gut with a horse-hair bow ... adapting to the rhythms of the multi-noted piano are proving a taxing new field of endeavour ... thus the high-flying talk of paradigms ... but might as well try to catch a firefly.

It must be very difficult to belatedly barge into the world of the piano ... as a trained musician who understands all the niceties of non-keyboard
orchestral roles ... and, with a sharp analytical adult mind, bravely confronts the complicated lore of the old Johanna.

Hang in there keystring ... you’re in for a bumpy ride ... thank goodness we’ve got some patient folk like Betty around to help with "the beat".

For what it’s worth I’ve included a linear diagram showing the number of beats in a measure ... and indicating US and UK duration names.

web page

Thank you for the compliment, btb, but I am hardly a musician. Piano is my first, not second, instrument, which I learned self taught half a century ago along with an intriguing way of reading piano scores, since I could not read notes. I knew where to find the tonic, and radio music floating around the house provided the patterns the the child's ear.

I am returning to the piano after a 30 year absence, this time to play it properly. The instrument that hangs from one's chin is daunting. The piano can be played by anyone, but played well by only a few. Recently we have even see a cat play the piano.

Paradigm, dear btb, is nothing more than a shift in perspective. Instead of changing the notation you change the perspective and all becomes well. I h ave not yet found difficulty with any of the "difficult" music you have presented, because my childhood way of "reading" music almost pictorally along with a strong sense of sound kicks in. The modern digital mind has barely permeted my being, so I am not perplexed by what perplexes that mind. If I could glean the sense of a score at age 12 by seeing the patterns, and not knowing note names, should I not be able to do so now, when I do know the note names?

I appreciate your diagramatic representation of note values. It makes the fractional nature of the note apparent, which was the discovery of the day. As such, your digram, which looks different from the usual note tree representation, is, erm, a paradigm[/b] of a different order, nicely shifted.